Sun burns, bug bites and dry skin are part of enjoying a summer in Colorado.

It’s always nice when you can whip up some handmade remedies for these inevitable irritations to soothe sun-kissed skin.

The Denver Craft Ninjas recently got together for our once-a-month project and made a few such at-home skincare recipes, which not only smooth rough spots but also take the sting out of other annoying summer maladies.

On this Independence Day, there’s a good chance you have barbeque on the brain. The holiday is certainly about patriotism. But let’s face it, it’s also about burgers and brats.

With the wildfires around Colorado and the ongoing dangerous conditions, fire safety is also top-of-mind this year, and for good reason.

While there’s a ton of fun to be had today — along with good eats from the grill — remember that people are injured and property is damaged every year in grill-related accidents, with July Fourth typically being the day more fires are reported nationwide than any other day of the year.

So as you go forth and grill today, take these fire-safety precautions to ensure a delicious and incident-free holiday.

I knew it would happen someday. After years of getting my veggies from farmer’s markets, it became obvious that choosing food from local soil gave people a kind of high, and that farmers were some of the absolute coolest people around. That they had fans, almost groupies, really, people who anticipated their appearance at the market for weeks and were completely bummed if they didn’t get to eat their vegetables or cheese or eggs or chicken all week. That they were the new rock stars.

Calendar collaborators Liz Gaylor and Kelsi Nagy were way ahead of me. Their enterprise, Pitchfork Pinups Calendar Co., has created the first “Farmers of the Front Range” calendar for 2012, with the help of Fort Collins photographer Darren Mahuron. Each month features the folks you’ve seen at farmer’s markets in Denver, Boulder or Fort Collins, with an epigram, a recipe, and a description of the farm itself.

For example, June’s pinups are Bailey and Dennis Stenson of Happy Heart Farm, who pioneered one of the first CSA (community supported agriculture) programs in Colorado. They’re shown with their tandem bicycle, which usually accompanies them outside the farm close to Fort Collins. June also features this bit of wisdom from Barbara Kingsolver: “Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt.”

Since there’s snow coming to Colorado’s mountains now, I’m especially grateful that I got up to Estes Park last Friday to see some things in the gorgeous, golden light of autumn, which always seems that much more intense the higher you go. What follows is a random list of eye-catching things, from the high country and from my desk.

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Cleome, or spider flower, in downtown Estes Park

1. Cleome – a.k.a. spider flower – this giant stand of it, with stalks as big around as my thumb and blossoms that came up to my chin, taking people’s eyes off the parking lot for a resort.

Becky Hensley is the co-founder of Share Denver - a community craft space in Park Hill. She's also the proud Ninja-in Chief of the Denver Craft Ninjas -- a women’s crafting collective dedicated to keeping the DIY spirit alive through laughter, shared skills, and cocktails.

Colorado native Mark Montano is an international designer, artist, author and television personality. He has appeared on TLC’s “While You Were Out” and “10 Years Younger,” as well as “My Celebrity Home” on the Style Network, “She’s Moving In” on We TV, “The Tony Danza Show” on ABC, and “My Home 2.0” on Fox.